WordPress VIP Services, Work, and Resources

WordPress VIP is Automattic's enterprise platform for newsrooms, banks, telecoms, and Fortune 500 brands running WordPress at scale. Sites on VIP carry a different operational shape than self-hosted WordPress — managed code review, restricted plugin and function lists, two-factor deploys, and SLAs measured against publication minutes, not pageviews. Working on VIP means writing PHP that survives a 9 a.m. content-team push during a breaking-news event, debugging through Varnish and Batcache rather than around them, and treating the deploy pipeline as a first-class part of the product. The Postmedia network and BlackBerry's blog properties were both on VIP during the work I did with them — the engineering bar is closer to running a small SaaS than to a typical agency build.

Work in this area

Case study

Postmedia WordPress VIP Migration: Eleven Papers, One Parent Theme

In 2011–2012, when Postmedia moved its network of major Canadian daily newspapers onto WordPress, I was part of the team that built the platform — starting with the National Post as the flagship, then cascading to papers including the Calgary Herald, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Sun, and seven more. This is the architecture behind that rollout, and what it meant to prove WordPress could carry a national daily at a moment when that was still contested.

See Work: Postmedia WordPress VIP Migration: Eleven Papers, One Parent Theme

Era-accurate reconstruction of the National Post homepage style, circa 2014 — Postmedia network template I worked on during the WordPress migration.

Project

National Post — WordPress VIP Flagship in Postmedia’s 2011-2012 Network Migration

I worked on the National Post platform migration in 2011-2012, when Postmedia's flagship daily moved onto WordPress VIP at the start of the network rollout.

View Portfolio Piece: National Post — WordPress VIP Flagship in Postmedia’s 2011-2012 Network Migration

Project

DOSE.ca — bespoke entertainment property on the Postmedia VIP platform, 2011-2012

Bespoke WordPress VIP build for DOSE.ca, Postmedia's digital-native entertainment magazine. Built on a custom framework that sat on top of the Postmedia VIP infrastructure but did not use the chain's standardised daily-paper blog theme, with community-first content types and social-share affordances built into the editorial flow.

View Portfolio Piece: DOSE.ca — bespoke entertainment property on the Postmedia VIP platform, 2011-2012

Project

The StarPhoenix — Saskatoon child theme and iPad template on the Postmedia VIP platform, 2012

Per-paper theme and tablet template for The StarPhoenix on the shared Postmedia WordPress VIP blog platform — the multi-tenant theme system that ran the blog networks across every Postmedia daily in the country. One codebase, per-tenant configuration, one operational baseline for the central platform team to maintain.

View Portfolio Piece: The StarPhoenix — Saskatoon child theme and iPad template on the Postmedia VIP platform, 2012

Era-accurate reconstruction of the Financial Post homepage style, circa 2014 — Postmedia network template I worked on during the WordPress migration.

Project

Financial Post — Business-Daily Template Engineering in the Postmedia VIP Migration (2011-2012)

Newsroom theme work on the Financial Post — business-daily templates tuned for market-hours load and data-dense article layouts in the early 2010s.

View Portfolio Piece: Financial Post — Business-Daily Template Engineering in the Postmedia VIP Migration (2011-2012)

Era-accurate reconstruction of the canada.com homepage style, circa 2014 — Postmedia network template I worked on during the WordPress migration.

Project

canada.com — Portal Child Theme on the Postmedia WordPress VIP Network (2011-2013)

canada.com was the Postmedia property that didn't fit the newsroom template — because it didn't have a newsroom. A WordPress VIP contributor portal for dozens of celebrity blogs under Canada's national authority domain.

View Portfolio Piece: canada.com — Portal Child Theme on the Postmedia WordPress VIP Network (2011-2013)

The Province homepage as captured by the Wayback Machine, August 2014 — Postmedia network template I worked on during the WordPress migration.

Project

The Province — Tabloid Child Theme in the Postmedia VIP Migration (2011-2012)

Child-theme architecture for The Province — tabloid voice on the same shared Postmedia parent that carried The Vancouver Sun, on WordPress VIP in 2011-2012.

View Portfolio Piece: The Province — Tabloid Child Theme in the Postmedia VIP Migration (2011-2012)

Era-accurate reconstruction of the Vancouver Sun homepage style, circa 2014 — Postmedia network template I worked on during the WordPress migration.

Project

The Vancouver Sun — Broadsheet Child Theme in the Postmedia VIP Migration (2011-2012)

Newsroom theme work on The Vancouver Sun — broadsheet article templates and section landings tuned for long-form readers, on Postmedia's WordPress VIP build in 2011-2012.

View Portfolio Piece: The Vancouver Sun — Broadsheet Child Theme in the Postmedia VIP Migration (2011-2012)

Era-accurate reconstruction of the Calgary Herald homepage style, circa 2014 — Postmedia network template I worked on during the WordPress migration.

Project

Calgary Herald — Energy-Beat Child Theme in the Postmedia VIP Migration (2011-2012)

Performance work on the Calgary Herald — homepage tuning under heavy ad load on an energy-sector news cycle, on Postmedia's WordPress VIP rollout in 2011-2012.

View Portfolio Piece: Calgary Herald — Energy-Beat Child Theme in the Postmedia VIP Migration (2011-2012)